“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned.
I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
-- Antonio Gramsci
The old forms of the Left are moribund and the new forms are stupid. We're making a podcast that discusses the need to organize a Dialectical Pessimism and develop a salvage project capable of sparking a new workers' movement for socialism.
A clean, honest, and unsentimental melancholy is required; we are cultivating one and would like to share it with you.
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Episodes
Monday Oct 31, 2022
Monday Oct 31, 2022
This week we read The Tragedy of the Worker by the Salvage Collective and discussed the implications of looming climate collapse. Once again we ask: what kind of world do you want to build in the post-apocalyptic wasteland?
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3727-the-tragedy-of-the-worker
Music: The Broadways- We'll Have a Party
Friday Oct 14, 2022
Friday Oct 14, 2022
The Lost Horizons gang is back together.
We welcome Comrade Adam back to the Lost Horizons network and discuss a couple of articles about Hegel, Foucault, and MADNESS.
The Good the Mad and the Ugly: Part I
The Good the Mad and the Ugly: Part II
https://www.patreon.com/subjectiveconditions
Music: Madness- One Step Beyond
Monday Oct 03, 2022
Monday Oct 03, 2022
Happy October! Its what they call spooky season so it is only fitting that we dive into a book about Fear. This is a work of left sociology by heavyweight Polish intellectual and dissident Marxist, Zygmunt Bauman who is a harsh critic of late capitalist modernity.
From the publisher's note:
"Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether its the fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of indiscriminate terrorist attacks, we live today in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. Fear is the name we give to our uncertainty in the face of the dangers that characterize our liquid modern age, to our ignorance of what the threat is and our incapacity to determine what can and can't be done to counter it."
We cover the introduction and first two chapters in this episode.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2006. Liquid Fear. Cambridge U.A.: Polity Press.
Music: New Model Army- 225
Wednesday Sep 21, 2022
Wednesday Sep 21, 2022
Jason is out of the rehab facility and convalescing with our sister, so we decided to do a little test recording to see how it felt to be podcasting again after a coma and traumatic brain injury. We decided it went pretty alright and will be back soon with some episodes.
This isn't a real episode, but we have part two of our reading group coming soon and Jason and I will be recording part three of our Czechoslovak socialism series this month as well.
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Welcome to the fifth and final part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for a set of chapters dealing with the Taiping Revolution, Chinese Christian Marxism, and Christianity in the DPRK.
We are missing Jason on this podcast, but hopefully, he will be back some time this month.
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: Han Lei, Qi Jianbo, and Fan Xiaobin- The Vast Heaven and Earth
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
Book Clubs are back, back in a temporarily diminished capacity, but back. This week we read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Rodrigo Nunes' new book on Verso. This book rhymes with concepts we have been discussing on the podcast for quite some time, so we were excited to dive in.
Nunes, Rodrigo. Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organisation. Verso, 2021.
To join in future reading groups please join our Patreon by clicking below.
Monday Aug 22, 2022
Monday Aug 22, 2022
Welcome to the fourth part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for a set of chapters dealing with Althusser's Christianity, Farnham Maynard, and the God-building Project of Anatoly Lunacharsky.
We are missing Jason on this podcast, but hopefully, he will be back in a month or two. Until then we will wrap up this series without him.
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: Choir of the Brethren at Valaam Monastary- Agni Parthene
Tuesday Jul 19, 2022
Tuesday Jul 19, 2022
Welcome to the third part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for the third set of chapters dealing with the contradictory legacy of Martin Luther and Marx's secular eschaton.
This episode was recorded before Jason's accident, but I have just now gotten around to mixing and uploading it. It has been a crazy month, but we are hoping to get back in the swing of things soon. Jason won't be able to podcast again until probably September at the earliest, but we are going to try to get some stuff together in his absence. Enjoy!
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: Norfolk Chamber Consort - J.S. Bach, Cantata 106: II. Gottes Zeit ist die allerbester Zeit
Wednesday Jul 13, 2022
Wednesday Jul 13, 2022
It's been about a month since we posted anything, here is why.
Don't worry, we will be back soon!
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
Welcome to the second part of our reading series on Roland Boer's Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. We are joined by our Comrades in Christ, Mir and Ben, for the second set of chapters dealing with the contradictory legacies of St, Paul, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.
Boer, Roland. Red Theology: On the Christian Communist Tradition. Studies in Critical Research on Religion . Haymarket Books, 2020.
Music: John Brown's Body- Paul Robeson